12 AM and 12 PM
Dewayne Basnett
pickup time. I wanted 12 noon which was not a choice. My choices were
12 AM or 12 PM.
A friend of mine and I had this debate years ago and ended up betting
$5.00 which I one. Her mother, who worked for the Library of Congress
informed her that I was correct, there is no such thing as 12 AM or 12
PM. It is one of the reason that the military has it's own time.
Is this confusion related to information systems?
--
Dewayne Basnett - dew...@nvi.to - www.nvi.to
phone: 610.415.0170 - pager: 888.233.7395 pin 1911091
"Golf has probably kept more people sane than psychiatrists have."
Harvey Penick
Joe Thompson
> A friend of mine and I had this debate years ago and ended up betting
> $5.00 which I one. Her mother, who worked for the Library of Congress
> informed her that I was correct, there is no such thing as 12 AM or 12
> PM. It is one of the reason that the military has it's own time.
By convention (in the US at least), 12 noon is 12 PM, and 12 midnight is
12AM. There's a roundabout justification for this: in the original
Latin, "noon" was "meridiem" and midnight was "antimeridiem." Times
before noon were "antemeridiem" (note 'e' rather than 'i') and after noon
were "postmeridiem".
The obvious abbreviation of "meridiem" is M (which is still seen on some
things like church schedules). Postmeridiem became PM, antemeridiem
became AM, and antimeridiem would naturally be AM too. Later, apparently
it was decided that 12:00 M looked silly when every other time was an AM
or a PM, and since 12:00 AM was taken noon became 12:00 PM.
I'm confident about the first paragraph, but be warned that the second
paragraph is pure speculation on my part. Note also that my clocks and
watches are all set to 24-hour time where possible to avoid needing to
deal with such issues internally.
Some people still use the term "forenoon" to describe the period between
sunrise and noon. -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson | http://kensey.home.mindspring.com/
$spam$@orion-com.com | O- He-Who-Grinds-the-Unworthy
Charlottesville, VA | "I'd like to take this time to formally
thank you for bringing back a lot of bad memories." -- ADB on ASR
Jim Esler
>
> Recently I was making a car reservation online and had to select the
> pickup time. I wanted 12 noon which was not a choice. My choices were
>
> A friend of mine and I had this debate years ago and ended up betting
> $5.00 which I one. Her mother, who worked for the Library of Congress
> informed her that I was correct, there is no such thing as 12 AM or 12
> PM. It is one of the reason that the military has it's own time.
>
It is very rare for a program to handle something correctly when the
programmer does not fully understand the problem. (I have been amazed
many times when I found a program worked correctly by accident or
because of compensating bugs). Obviously, in this case the implementors
of the system did not understand the meaning of the terms AM and PM, but
this is not uncommon. You may have been able to work around this
limitation by entering 11:59 AM. 12:01 PM may also have worked, but
there is a distinct chance the programmer got that wrong, too.
--
Jim Esler
Peter Seebach
Joe Thompson <$spam$@orion-com.com> wrote:
>In article <36800F25...@nvi.to>, spamnojunk...@nvi.to wrote:
>> $5.00 which I one. Her mother, who worked for the Library of Congress
>> informed her that I was correct, there is no such thing as 12 AM or 12
>> PM. It is one of the reason that the military has it's own time.
>By convention (in the US at least), 12 noon is 12 PM, and 12 midnight is
>12AM. There's a roundabout justification for this: in the original
>Latin, "noon" was "meridiem" and midnight was "antimeridiem." Times
>before noon were "antemeridiem" (note 'e' rather than 'i') and after noon
>were "postmeridiem".
There's a much simpler justification for this: 12:01 and 12:00 should
be "the same". Thus, since everyone agrees that the dark 12:01 is AM,
the dark 12:00 is too.
-s
--
Copyright 1998, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Send me money - get cool programs and hardware! No commuting, please.
Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!
Gene Wirchenko
>In article <$spam$-22129818...@user-37ka4is.dialup.mindspring.com>,
>Joe Thompson <$spam$@orion-com.com> wrote:
>>In article <36800F25...@nvi.to>, spamnojunk...@nvi.to wrote:
>>> A friend of mine and I had this debate years ago and ended up betting
>>> $5.00 which I one. Her mother, who worked for the Library of Congress
>>> informed her that I was correct, there is no such thing as 12 AM or 12
>>> PM. It is one of the reason that the military has it's own time.
>
>>By convention (in the US at least), 12 noon is 12 PM, and 12 midnight is
>>12AM. There's a roundabout justification for this: in the original
>>Latin, "noon" was "meridiem" and midnight was "antimeridiem." Times
>>before noon were "antemeridiem" (note 'e' rather than 'i') and after noon
>>were "postmeridiem".
>
>There's a much simpler justification for this: 12:01 and 12:00 should
>be "the same". Thus, since everyone agrees that the dark 12:01 is AM,
>the dark 12:00 is too.
Right! Let's start counting "logically". Ready? 12, 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Rinse and repeat for a full day.
I prefer 24 hour time myself. 0001 makes more sense than 12:01
AM to me. Your opinion? See my sig.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Peter Seebach
Gene Wirchenko <ge...@vip.net> wrote:
> I prefer 24 hour time myself. 0001 makes more sense than 12:01
>AM to me. Your opinion? See my sig.
Well, I agree, actually.
For about a year, I had a watch in 12-hour mode. I had it in 12-hour mode
because I couldn't figure out how to change it; the watch had four buttons.
Set, mode (changed from hours to minutes to seconds...), adjust, and some
other button that didn't do anything in clock set mode. No 12/24 indicated
anywhere on the watch.
Then one day, while setting the watch for timezones, I saw it flash into 24
hour mode and back.
I started poking.
Turned out that, *in set mode only*, the 'light' button (which was on the
face of the watch, so it didn't "look like a button") was a 12/24 switch.
And didn't illuminate.
Ugh.
Robert Billing
>
> however they get along with 1900 and 1901 not being the same ... as
> well as 2000 and 2001 (i.e. new years for the next century is 2001).
Earwigs!
Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't!
Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't!
Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't!
Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't!
Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't!
Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't!
Repeat until thread length > 1000 postings.
--
I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal
lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/
"Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three"
Foobar T. Clown
>
> however they get along with 1900 and 1901 not being the same ... as
> well as 2000 and 2001 (i.e. new years for the next century is 2001).
Don't know which "they" you're talking about. Everything I've read on
the subject says that some people have been arguing about when a century
starts for... well... centuries!
John Savard
> Right! Let's start counting "logically". Ready? 12, 1, 2, 3,
>4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Rinse and repeat for a full day.
I would be only too thrilled if 30 minutes after noon, instead of
being 12:30 PM, as it is now, was both 0:30 PM or 12:30 AM, depending
on the choice of the person speaking...
that way, a late movie on at 2 AM Friday morning could be listed in
the TV schedule as being on at 14 PM Thursday night.
In other words, make "PM" just mean "add twelve", and allow values for
the time of day outside of 0 to 24 hours.
But that isn't going to happen soon...
John Savard
http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
lis...@zetnet.co.uk
On 1998-12-22 $spam$@orion-com.com(JoeThompson) said:
:The obvious abbreviation of "meridiem" is M (which is still seen on
:some things like church schedules). Postmeridiem became PM,
:antemeridiem became AM, and antimeridiem would naturally be AM too.
:Later, apparently it was decided that 12:00 M looked silly when
:every other time was an AM or a PM, and since 12:00 AM was taken
:noon became 12:00 PM.
[speculative nature of this paragraph noted]
It makes sense in another way too. Let's say that 'antemeridiem' and
'postmeridiem' were the only things ever abbreviated to AM and PM.
However, the length of time for which it is actually noon is
infinitesimal, which means that as soon as you've got around to
reporting the time it's actually gone past that time, if only by a few
nanoseconds - therefore it's perfectly logical to report 12:00 PM for
noon.
--
Communa (lis...@zetnet.co.uk) -- you know soft spoken changes nothing
Kin Hoong CHUNG
: se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
: Right! Let's start counting "logically". Ready? 12, 1, 2, 3,
: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Rinse and repeat for a full day.
Sigh. Anybody looked at an analogue clock face recently. The hour
(always labelled 1, ..., 12---except for those military types) always
starts on the hour, and I suspect that this has a large bearing on how
we read time. I seem to recall that this time stuff goes back to the
the Babylonians(?) and their base 60 arithmetic.
Merry Christmas,
Kin Hoong
Paul Guertin
(John Savard) wrote:
> that way, a late movie on at 2 AM Friday morning could be listed in
> the TV schedule as being on at 14 PM Thursday night.
Good idea. When Dr. Who was shown at 2AM, five times a week, I
could have set my VCR to "Monday-Friday, 26:00 to 27:00" instead
of lying to it about the current time like I did.
Why does the day begin at 5 o'clock in TV Guide, but not on my VCR?
That should be a user-settable option. But seeing that manufacturers
have not yet figured out that a battery backup would be a nice thing
to have in a VCR that can be programmed 1 year in advance, I guess
I shouldn't get my hopes up.
Like a friend of mine once said (hi PS), what the world needs is
a VCR with a serial port.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
Torsten Poulin
>>4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Rinse and repeat for a full day.
>
> being 12:30 PM, as it is now, was both 0:30 PM or 12:30 AM, depending
> on the choice of the person speaking...
>
> the TV schedule as being on at 14 PM Thursday night.
Something along those lines is actually used on train and bus tickets
here in Copenhagen, Denmark. We use a 24 hour clock where midnight
is 0:00, but tickets get stamped with 24:xx, 25:xx, etc. Even the date
remains the same. There are a few hours without public transportation
between 2:00 and 5:00 AM so that's the most convenient time to
start the next (logical) day.
-Torsten
David K Cornutt
>
> Don't know which "they" you're talking about. Everything I've read on
> the subject says that some people have been arguing about when a century
> starts for... well... centuries!
Grin... more the reason to press for time and calendar reform!
(And no, I entertain no quixotic fantasies about that ever happening...)
I think we should solve the problem by just defining the first
century A.D. to have been only 99 years long. :-)
A couple of related anecdotes about time and date:
In astronomy, when positions of sky objects need to be specfied
very precisely (such as in a hi-res atlas), they give the
positions as of "epoch 2000.0" or similar, where the time
2000.0 is defined as 00:00 UTC of the zeroth day of the year 2000.
Of course, that's actually December 31, 1999. Just to make
it a little more confusing.
In RDOS, an early-'70s vintage operating system from Data
General, they set their time epoch as being the beginning of
January 1968. Unfortunately, the specific definition was done
as "day 1 = January 1, 1968". Now whenever the system
init'ed a new disk or partition, it set up special file names
for things like the console TTY port, the printer port, the
paper tape punch, etc. (These weren't real files, but they
did have node and directory entries because of the way that
part of the system was implemented.) Unfortunately, the disk
initing code, instead of setting their creation dates to day 1,
zeroed those fields out. So these files always showed up
in a listing with a creation date of "1/0/68". We always
wanted to throw them a birthday party, but it's kind of like
trying to figure out when to have a party for someone born
on February 29. :-)
--
David K. Cornutt, Residentially Engineered, Huntsville, AL
Solving the Eternal Question: "Who is Kimberly Morris, and how
did she get her own exit on Interstate 65?"
Anders Hultman
<no....@thank.you.dk> wrote:
>> that way, a late movie on at 2 AM Friday morning could be listed in
>> the TV schedule as being on at 14 PM Thursday night.
>
>Something along those lines is actually used on train and bus tickets
>here in Copenhagen, Denmark. We use a 24 hour clock where midnight
>is 0:00, but tickets get stamped with 24:xx, 25:xx, etc. Even the date
>remains the same. There are a few hours without public transportation
>between 2:00 and 5:00 AM so that's the most convenient time to
>start the next (logical) day.
The same goes for public transportation here in Stockholm, Sweden.
anders
Robert Billing
> Like a friend of mine once said (hi PS), what the world needs is
> a VCR with a serial port.
Which all brodcast VCRs in fact have.
jsa...@ecn.ab.ca
: On Thu, 24 Dec 1998 20:47:43 GMT, jsa...@tenMAPSONeerf.edmonton.ab.ca
: (John Savard) wrote:
: > that way, a late movie on at 2 AM Friday morning could be listed in
: > the TV schedule as being on at 14 PM Thursday night.
: Good idea. When Dr. Who was shown at 2AM, five times a week, I
: could have set my VCR to "Monday-Friday, 26:00 to 27:00" instead
: of lying to it about the current time like I did.
My VCR, a cheap 2-head VHS Hi-Fi from Funai, doesn't even let me set
"Monday-Friday".
But I owned a Canon calculator that could be set for several personal
alarms - and an alarm could either be set for a specific date and time, or
it could be set for any time of day - for any combination of the seven
days of the week.
I think there is, by now, one very expensive VCR that has that kind of
programming flexibility...and one reason VCR companies aren't falling over
themselves to include this sort of thing is because many VCR owners
haven't even figured out how to set the time on their VCRs...
but microchips are cheap, guys!
John Savard
jsa...@ecn.ab.ca
: Paul Guertin wrote:
: > Like a friend of mine once said (hi PS), what the world needs is
: > a VCR with a serial port.
: Which all brodcast VCRs in fact have.
All broadcast VCRs in fact have an RS-232 serial port, allowing easy,
direct interface with a personal computer without the purchase of special
equipment?
No.
Now, all broadcast VCRs do have "video-in" and "video-out" connectors,
over which analogue video is transmitted serially...
and most *recent* broadcast VCRs also have an infrared port - usually
input only - for a remote control.
But that is *not* what most people are thinking of when they say "a serial
port".
John Savard
Joe Thompson
> I think there is, by now, one very expensive VCR that has that kind of
> programming flexibility...and one reason VCR companies aren't falling over
> themselves to include this sort of thing is because many VCR owners
> haven't even figured out how to set the time on their VCRs...
Our old Panasonic VCR at home (which is at least 12 years old now, if my
parents even still have it) had about 20 buttons. None of which were
labeled "Clock". -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson | http://kensey.home.mindspring.com/
$spam$@orion-com.com | O- He-Who-Grinds-the-Unworthy
"While preceding your entrance with a grenade is a good tactic in
Quake, it can lead to problems if attempted at work." -- C Hacking
John Varela
> themselves to include this sort of thing is because many VCR owners
> haven't even figured out how to set the time on their VCRs...
I once caught my wife setting the clock when she was trying to program the
machine to record. But our 1998-model VCR sets its own clock when tuned to a
Public Broadcasting System station. Is there no such service in Canada?
--
John Varela
(delete . between mind and spring to e-mail me)
Joe Thompson
<hizdnkFxi9dw-p...@user-37ka98n.dialup.mindspring.com>,
jva...@mind.spring.com wrote:
> I once caught my wife setting the clock when she was trying to program the
> machine to record. But our 1998-model VCR sets its own clock when tuned to a
> Public Broadcasting System station.
My brand-new (purchased about 2 PM on 31 Dec 1998) PCS phone syncs itself
to the Intelos clock when you turn it on (assuming it can find a signal to
transmit on at all; otherwise it doesn't give time or signal strength
readouts). I gather that, like voice mail and text messaging, this is
pretty much standard on PCS phones. -- Joe
barnacle
Um, sorry John, I have to disagree...
Most (if not all) broadcast VCRs (from VHS through U-Matic, Beta, DigiBeta,
D1-D5 and I'd guess anything still in the pipeline) *do* have serial ports -
which allow control of the VCR by standard editing machines, clever vision
mixers etc. They also tend to have some sort of positional information
available like timecode.
I'd assume this is pretty much what you'd want in the context of Paul's quote
- control of the machine rather than access to the video content. Most PCs
woud be rather upset trying to cope with 600Mps digital video...
By 'broadcast' I assume video recorders used in a professional broadcasting
environment.
Regards,
barnacle
nailed-barnacle.home.ml.org
Nick S Bensema
Joe Thompson <$spam$@orion-com.com> wrote:
>In article <368ce...@ecn.ab.ca>, jsa...@ecn.ab.ca () wrote:
>
>> programming flexibility...and one reason VCR companies aren't falling over
>> haven't even figured out how to set the time on their VCRs...
>
>parents even still have it) had about 20 buttons. None of which were
>labeled "Clock". -- Joe
My VCR has power, channel-up, channel-down, and the standard five
tape-recorder buttons. There are no other provisions.
If I'm in a line input mode and my remote control breaks, I can't
watch TV. Because I don't have a TV, I have a Commodore monitor
and a VCR.
I kind of wish they'd put more buttons on a VCR, but just the
play/rew/ff/stop/rec buttons, a ten-key, and a few straightforward
buttons that bring up menus. Then it'd be as easy to use as a
microwave.
It's probably the only thing they can try, now that most VCRs have
on-screen programming that SHOULD be pretty straightforward..
except the "menu" button is so hard to find on the remote, especially
mine where it's called "program" and has no indication that's where
the clock is.
--
Nick Bensema <ni...@primenet.com> 98-KUPD Red Card #710563 UIN: 2135445
~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
</BLINK>
Samael
Peter Seebach wrote in message ...
>In article <36804dcd...@news.vip.net>,
>Gene Wirchenko <ge...@vip.net> wrote:
>> I prefer 24 hour time myself. 0001 makes more sense than 12:01
>>AM to me. Your opinion? See my sig.
>
>Well, I agree, actually.
>
>For about a year, I had a watch in 12-hour mode. I had it in 12-hour mode
>because I couldn't figure out how to change it; the watch had four buttons.
>
>Set, mode (changed from hours to minutes to seconds...), adjust, and some
>other button that didn't do anything in clock set mode. No 12/24 indicated
>anywhere on the watch.
>
>Then one day, while setting the watch for timezones, I saw it flash into 24
>hour mode and back.
>
>I started poking.
>
>Turned out that, *in set mode only*, the 'light' button (which was on the
>face of the watch, so it didn't "look like a button") was a 12/24 switch.
>And didn't illuminate.
Isn't it just terrbile when people overload functions like that?
Samael
Paul Guertin
> In article <$spam$-01019912...@user-37ka4hj.dialup.mindspring.com>,
> Joe Thompson <$spam$@orion-com.com> wrote:
> >In article <368ce...@ecn.ab.ca>, jsa...@ecn.ab.ca () wrote:
> >
> >> many VCR owner haven't even figured out how to set the time on
> >>their VCRs...
> >
> >Our old Panasonic VCR at home (which is at least 12 years old now, if my
> >parents even still have it) had about 20 buttons. None of which were
> >labeled "Clock". -- Joe
Older VCRs were sometimes difficult to use, I agree, but setting the
time on modern VCRs is rather easy, I think. It's just that "I don't
even know how to set my VCR's clock!" has become a Luddite rallying
cry. Do you know who popularized it? I remember a stand-up comic in
the early 80s, but unfortunately no name comes to mind.
> If I'm in a line input mode and my remote control breaks, I can't
> watch TV. Because I don't have a TV, I have a Commodore monitor
> and a VCR.
Hey, that's the setup I used last year when I lived in an apartment
in Montreal. 1802 monitor, if I remember correctly. Before that, I
watched TV on an amber Amdek 9-incher from my high school's physics
lab.
ObAFC: We used Tandy CoCo 2 computers in that lab. A student who had
been there two years before was a CoCo hacker. He had built special
boards that turned the CoCos into function generators, saving the
school a lot of money. The program he wrote to drive his generators
was extremely spiffy-looking, with his name animated in 3D, and so on.
When I visited the lab for the last time, 6 months ago, everything was
running on Wintel machines and commercial software. Sigh...
> I kind of wish they'd put more buttons on a VCR, but just the
> play/rew/ff/stop/rec buttons, a ten-key, and a few straightforward
> buttons that bring up menus. Then it'd be as easy to use as a
> microwave.
>
> It's probably the only thing they can try, now that most VCRs have
> on-screen programming that SHOULD be pretty straightforward..
On-screen programming is okay, but there are times when I'd like to
program my VCR without it (for example, when someone else is watching
TV at the same time, or when I don't feel like turning the monitor on
just to be able to program the VCR).
One thing I deplore is the ever-growing dependence on the remote
control. On older VCRs, you could do everything from the VCR "console"
and the remote only had a few essential functions.
Nowadays, VCRs look like those very expensive amplifiers with a power
switch connected to a relay whose only function is to make a
satisfying "click" when you turn it on and a volume control the size
of a steering wheel, and remotes are full of tiny buttons for
functions nobody ever uses. Or worse, they have a menu system that
forces you to go through four screens to do anything. It's like
automated voice mail for your TV!
Menu systems are a neat idea, but they sometimes create new problems.
Case in point: a few years ago, I bought an HP 28S calculator. At the
time, it was HP's top of the line. It was one of the first calculators
to use on-screen dynamic menus, like on some ATMs: buttons next to
the screen with their function shown next to them. The problem was
that the designers went overboard.
Even standard functions like sine and logarithm were on menus. You
had to push two keys to enter a sine (TRIG then SIN), and three
or four keys for some functions I often needed. It was ridiculous!
I tolerated it for a few months but then bought a cheaper calculator
for day-to-day use. I kept the 28S and learned the basics of
programming it (the language was a weird Forth-like thing) but the
lack of I/O capabilities was a big disappointment.
FWIW, my primary calculator nowadays is the HP 32SII. It's not
perfect, but it's pretty nice anyway. It's basically a modernized
version of the HP 15C, with a few bells and whistles thrown in.
I also have an HP 16C (HP's older "programmer's calculator") that
I use when I play with the Apple II.
Is it time for another round of the "My Favorite Calculator" thread,
with obligatory RPN vs. AOS subflamewar?
Or, if you want something a little more meaty: do you think anyone
will ever make the effort to design a good, powerful, easy-to-use
scientific calculator, now that you can buy a palmtop computer and
stripped-down versions of mathematical software for a reasonable
price?
Yesterday, I bought a Sharp Zaurus PI-6600 palmtop with handwriting
recognition for kanji characters. Yay! No more counting the strokes
and dowsing for radicals! Now I just need to remember the correct
stroke order.
(Crossposted to alt.religion.kibology because there's not enough
geekiness in there right now.)
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
Marco S Hyman
> FWIW, my primary calculator nowadays is the HP 32SII. It's not
> perfect, but it's pretty nice anyway. It's basically a modernized
> version of the HP 15C, with a few bells and whistles thrown in.
> I also have an HP 16C (HP's older "programmer's calculator") that
> I use when I play with the Apple II.
Subject drift time: I bought my 16C around 15 years ago. I installed
the three batteries and saw in the instructions that they'd probably
last 6 months or so.
I'm still using the same three batteries.
Friends report similar results.
Has anyone ever had to replace the batteries on their 16C?
If not, how can I get similar results with my laptop :-)
// marc
bea...@my-dejanews.com
NO! It doesn't make sense EITHER way. "Ante" means "before".
"Post" means "after". If 12 noon is the meridiem, then it
is not AM (before the meridiem) and it is not PM (after the
meridiem). It IS the meridiem. Similarly for midnight.
You are saying that it is perfectly logical to say that
x = 12, therefore, x > x. WRONG!
If you want to be correct, say 12:00:01 PM, which is definitely
PM. It is ILLOGICAL to refer to 12:00 noon as 12:00 PM. It is
similarly illogical to refer to 12:00 midnight as 12:00 AM.
This is why in military time, there is no such time as
0000. If they are planning to do an attack at midnight,
they will say that the attack will start at 0001Z or
whatever timezone they are using. This avoids the problem
with "which day is this midnight in".
Mind you though, there is a convention which goes that
12 noon is 12PM and 12 midnight is 12AM. I don't use
it myself, because I explicity state midnight or noon.
But I can understand other people using it. But it's
still WRONG!
cheers
Beable van Beable
Beable Industries
Timing Division
--
They can have the pencils from my nose when they can pry them
from my cold dead nostrils!
VIVA LA REVOLUTION! -- Dean Lenort
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Samael
Hugh Davies wrote in message <76tduv$p...@axalotl.demon.co.uk>...
>In article <3691ac7e...@news.newsguy.com>, p...@sff.net (Paul Guertin)
writes:
>
>>On-screen programming is okay,
>
>No it isn't. That's one of the reasons the Sony sucks. Having to switch
>the TV on to program the VCR sucks. Hard.
You are obviously part of the 3% of the american public that ever turns
their TV off.
Samael
Samael
bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message <76v2ek$qb1$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>Mind you though, there is a convention which goes that
>12 noon is 12PM and 12 midnight is 12AM. I don't use
>it myself, because I explicity state midnight or noon.
>But I can understand other people using it. But it's
>still WRONG!
Any form of communication that allows explicit transmission of information
is by definition 'right'.
Samael
J. Benz
bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> NO! It doesn't make sense EITHER way. "Ante" means "before".
> "Post" means "after". If 12 noon is the meridiem, then it
> is not AM (before the meridiem) and it is not PM (after the
> meridiem). It IS the meridiem. Similarly for midnight.
> You are saying that it is perfectly logical to say that
> x = 12, therefore, x > x. WRONG!
Thank you Mister Spock. So who says natural language rules are logical? Or
should be? Ever hear the old one about 'ghoti'? (that's pronounced
'fish')...
Joe Morris
>Subject drift time: I bought my 16C around 15 years ago. I installed
>the three batteries and saw in the instructions that they'd probably
>last 6 months or so.
>I'm still using the same three batteries.
>Has anyone ever had to replace the batteries on their 16C?
>If not, how can I get similar results with my laptop :-)
I bought a 16C when it first came out (1981? 1982?) and I'm also still
on the original batteries. I do recall that I thought that I had lost
them in late 1983 when I was doing some contract work for NASA, but
it turned out that merely reseating them in the battery compartment
fixed the problem.
Joe Morris
Paul Guertin
> Subject drift time: I bought my 16C around 15 years ago. I installed
> the three batteries and saw in the instructions that they'd probably
> last 6 months or so.
>
> I'm still using the same three batteries.
I bought my 16C secondhand and I don't know if the previous owner
changed the batteries or not. But I've been using it on and off for
about three years now on the same set of batteries.
When I was in 9th grade, I was given a Casio LCD watch. Its battery
lasted for about eight years.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
The Avocado Avenger
>I'm not actually any part whatsoever of the American public, since I'm
>in England.
Like *that* makes a difference.
Stacia * The Avocado Avenger * Life is a tale told by an idiot;
http://www.io.com/~stacia/ * Full of sound and fury,
Don't remove guacamole to reply! * Signifying nothing.
Paul Guertin
> In article <3691ac7e...@news.newsguy.com>, p...@sff.net (Paul Guertin) writes:
>
> >Older VCRs were sometimes difficult to use, I agree,
>
> Bah. The UI on my brand new Sony sucks donkey dick.
But at least, on most newer VCRs, it's actually possible to use the
thing without constantly referring to the manual. First-generation
home VCRs were often studies in obfuscation.
> >but setting the
> >time on modern VCRs is rather easy, I think.
>
> But it sets it's own clock. And does DST by itself.
So my trick of setting the clock wrong to be able to record Dr. Who
at 2 AM "Monday to Friday" wouldn't have worked, I guess. Or perhaps
I could have lied about the time zone instead?
> >On-screen programming is okay,
>
> No it isn't. That's one of the reasons the Sony sucks. Having to switch
> the TV on to program the VCR sucks. Hard.
I agree. That's what I said in my original message: on-screen
programming is nice to have, but it should not be the only option.
I have an old Zenith VCR that does it right: it displays the
programming steps both on the TV screen and on its LED panel.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
Samael
Hugh Davies wrote in message <76vjt5$q...@axalotl.demon.co.uk>...
>In article <36933...@192.168.0.20>, "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com>
writes:
>>
>>Hugh Davies wrote in message <76tduv$p...@axalotl.demon.co.uk>...
>>>
>>>No it isn't. That's one of the reasons the Sony sucks. Having to switch
>>>the TV on to program the VCR sucks. Hard.
>>
>>
>>their TV off.
>
>I'm not actually any part whatsoever of the American public, since I'm
>in England.
Which State is that?
Samael
(who can't talk, as he's in Scotland)
barnacle
>Subject drift time: I bought my 16C around 15 years ago. I installed
>the three batteries and saw in the instructions that they'd probably
>last 6 months or so.
>
>I'm still using the same three batteries.
>
>
>Has anyone ever had to replace the batteries on their 16C?
>If not, how can I get similar results with my laptop :-)
>
over 11 years on my hp-11c...still ticking!
barnacle
nailed-barnacle.home.ml.org
Kirk Is
: In article <36933...@192.168.0.20>, "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> writes:
: >
: >Hugh Davies wrote in message <76tduv$p...@axalotl.demon.co.uk>...
: >>In article <3691ac7e...@news.newsguy.com>, p...@sff.net (Paul Guertin)
: >writes:
: >>
: >>>On-screen programming is okay,
: >>
: >>No it isn't. That's one of the reasons the Sony sucks. Having to switch
: >>the TV on to program the VCR sucks. Hard.
: >
: >
: >You are obviously part of the 3% of the american public that ever turns
: >their TV off.
: I'm not actually any part whatsoever of the American public, since I'm
: in England.
I guess I'm unclear as to what's so bad about unscreen programming. I can
understand about wanting all needed buttons on the unit itself, but it
seems that unless you're willing to invest in a small expense-adding LCD
display, the TV is a very decent monitor, allowing a much friendlier
interface.
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
"Kid, you ever get a message from God? Something you just had to do?
Something you just knew was gonna be the biggest thing in your life, ever?"
"No..."
"Me neither. But I'm working on it."
Joe Thompson
wrote:
> When I was in 9th grade, I was given a Casio LCD watch. Its battery
> lasted for about eight years.
My Casio, purchased in 1991, is turning 8 in 6 days. I finally had to get
the original "5-year" battery replaced about a year ago. The O-ring seals
that are supposed to be replaced every 2 years have never been touched.
It's been through rain, cold, heat, sweat, mowing lawns, daily showers,
and even a few times dropped on the floor. Most accurate timepiece I own,
and that includes my analog Seiko for wear with "nice" clothes (tux,
suit). The Seiko went through its 5-year battery in less than 5 years
too.
Of course my Casio has a built-in Y2029 problem (that's when the calendar
stops and wraps back to 1985) but what are the odds I'll still be... oh.
Actually since the calendar is just used to determine the day of the week
and whether or not to use a leap year, it'll always be possible to use an
appropriate calendar (there are 14 possible Gregorian calendars and they
all occur in the range 1985-2029 inclusive). -- Joe
bea...@my-dejanews.com
Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
If the convention allowed for EXPLICIT TRANSMISSION
OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
would it?
BTW, I'M TRANSMITTING EXPLICIT INFORMATION RIGHT NOW,
IKYWMF AITYD!!!1!!
cheers
Beable van Beable
Beable Industries
Clocks, Watches and Hourglasses Division
--
I hate leonardo dacapprio I thin he is a little bitch and a whiner. I
would pay my life savinge to beable to kick his
ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- Mark Sharpe
Scott Brown
>In article <36933...@192.168.0.20>,
> "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>>
>> Any form of communication that allows explicit transmission of information
>> is by definition 'right'.
>
>Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
>12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
>transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
If you know the convention, it's not ambiguous.
>If the convention allowed for EXPLICIT TRANSMISSION
>OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
>would it?
If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
if you happen to know its context and convention. Likewise the
12AM/PM convention.
Samael
bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message <7716nh$of8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
<76v2ek$qb1$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>> >Mind you though, there is a convention which goes that
>> >12 noon is 12PM and 12 midnight is 12AM. I don't use
>> >it myself, because I explicity state midnight or noon.
>> >But I can understand other people using it. But it's
>> >still WRONG!
>>
information
>> is by definition 'right'.
>
>Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
>12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
>transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
>
Except that everyone I know uses this convention, so it seemed reasonable.
In fact, I was under the impression that even those people on this list who
disagreed with its use understood what most people meant by it.
Is there anyone heer who uses the other convention (12AM=noon)?
>If the convention allowed for EXPLICIT TRANSMISSION
>OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
>would it?
You already agreed that you understood the convention. but you then said it
was 'wrong'. I fail to see how it can be wrong if it's understood.
>BTW, I'M TRANSMITTING EXPLICIT INFORMATION RIGHT NOW,
>IKYWMF AITYD!!!1!!
Nope, you're not, because I don't understand what you're saying.
I Kill You With My Feet
And In Your Dojo!!!1!!
Or what?
Samael
Paul Guertin
wrote:
> Marco S Hyman <ma...@snafu.org> writes:
>
> >Subject drift time: I bought my 16C around 15 years ago. I installed
> >the three batteries and saw in the instructions that they'd probably
> >last 6 months or so. I'm still using the same three batteries.
>
> I bought a 16C when it first came out (1981? 1982?) and I'm also still
> on the original batteries.
I put dull razor blades in my HP16C for a week and they become
sharp again.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
Mike Swaim
: In article <369319ff...@news.newsguy.com>, p...@sff.net (Paul Guertin)
: wrote:
:> When I was in 9th grade, I was given a Casio LCD watch. Its battery
:> lasted for about eight years.
: My Casio, purchased in 1991, is turning 8 in 6 days. I finally had to get
: the original "5-year" battery replaced about a year ago.
My last casio lasted about 8 years until the battery died. I took it
to 3 different shops, but none of them could get the back off to replace
the battery. Since I'd had problems replacing the battery on my previous
casio as well, I gave up and bought a self winding analog watch.
--
Mike Swaim, Avatar of Chaos: Disclaimer:I sometimes lie.
Home: sw...@c-com.net
Alum: sw...@alumni.rice.edu Quote: "Boingie"^4 Y,W&D
Eric J. Korpela
Scott Brown <s...@xmission.removethis.com> wrote:
>
>If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
>think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
>if you happen to know its context and convention.
Well, we don't know the context now do we. Is that the number of elapsed
seconds since Jan 1 1970 0:00:00 GMT? Or is it the number of days since
Jan 1 1970 0:00:00 GMT multiplied by 86400? Most UNIX systems and C compliers
I've used claim the first, but actually use the second. The difference is
that a day isn't always exactly 86400 seconds long. The difference can be
quite important in some applications.
Eric
--
Eric Korpela | An object at rest can never be
kor...@ssl.berkeley.edu | stopped.
<a href="http://sag-www.ssl.berkeley.edu/~korpela">Click for home page.</a>
Kirk Is
: In article <770jjd$pkr$2...@news3.tufts.edu>, kis...@allegro.cs.tufts.edu (Kirk Is) writes:
: 1) It means I have to turn the TV on to program the VCR. Would you like it
: if you had to turn on the toaster to make coffee?
No, but that's because there's only a slight functional link between the
two. The VCR acts an extension of the TV.
Oh. I guess you could set up a VCR independent of a TV, kind of a "Write
Only" device. Then you might have a reason to complain, but I suspect
that describes a tiny minority of setups. And it's outweighed by being
able to make a friendlier, less obscure interface.
: 2) It means I lose the vision part of any programme I might be watching while
: I program the VCR.
I went to the UK, and it looked as if they had commercials too. But
someone who is so desperate not to lose any of the current show AND catch
all of the taped one, every little tiny minute, sounds pretty desperate.
Besides, I thought we established your recording VCR wouldn't be connected
to your TV, in the best of all possible worlds.
I get annoyed how my cable company's online guide cuts out the sound of
the channel I was watching. VCRs don't have to do that, and (I believe)
some other company's cable box don't either.
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
you're not the first / you're not the last...
another day / another crash. --Laundry Room Graffito
Chris Hedley
"Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> writes:
> Is there anyone heer who uses the other convention (12AM=noon)?
I've never heard of that convention. Just as an onlooker, I'm surprised
this thread's gone on so long... (just for the record, I've always accepted
that 12PM==noon and 12AM==midnight)
Chris.
Jim Esler
So the logical sequence is: 10AM, 11AM, 12PM, 1PM ... 10PM, 11PM, 12AM,
1AM. Many situations provide a context that points to either noon or
midnight, so many people have never stopped to think about the meaning
of 12AM or 12PM. When faced with an ambiguous situation, their
reasoning could come up with either interpretation. The note that
started this thread concerned an ambiguous situation (anyone remember
what it was?).
--
Jim (length of a thread is inversely proportional to its
importance) Esler
Gene Wirchenko
>On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 02:38:40 GMT, bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
>>In article <36933...@192.168.0.20>,
>> "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Any form of communication that allows explicit transmission of information
>>> is by definition 'right'.
>>
>>Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
>>12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
>>transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
How is it ambiguous? If you don't know what 12AM and 12PM are,
then you have a problem, but it isn't ambiguity. If I refer to a
medical condition as "epitaxis" (I think that's the spelling.), you
may not know what I am talking about. That doesn't make it ambiguous.
A doctor would probably know the term. (BTW, it means nosebleed.)
>If you know the convention, it's not ambiguous.
Right!
>>If the convention allowed for EXPLICIT TRANSMISSION
>>OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
>>would it?
It does. You can send "12AM" and "12PM".
>If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
>think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
>if you happen to know its context and convention. Likewise the
>12AM/PM convention.
No, it isn't unambiguous if you have to know something else in
order to use it. I'm guessing it's the number of seconds since the
UNIX epoch (The number is about the right size.), but it is a guess.
Now then, as to "now". "now" being when you wrote your message?
"now" being when you posted your message? "now" being when I
downloaded your message? "now" being when I read your message? Or
did you mean something else?
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Randal L. Schwartz
Scott> It was current when I ran "now", which is a four-line hack I wrote
Scott> specifically to find out the current time (I was using this in
Scott> conjunction with another program which extracted a file's timestamp,
Scott> and these were used by a shell script to see if a file is old enough
Scott> to delete).
Four lines?? You need Perl.
$ perl -e 'print time'
915769067
$
--
Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
Keywords: Perl training, UNIX[tm] consulting, video production, skiing, flying
Email: <mer...@stonehenge.com> Snail: (Call) PGP-Key: (finger mer...@teleport.com)
Web: <A HREF="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/">My Home Page!</A>
Quote: "I'm telling you, if I could have five lines in my .sig, I would!" -- me
Noah A Christis
wrote:
>So the logical sequence is: 10AM, 11AM, 12PM, 1PM ... 10PM, 11PM, 12AM,
>1AM.
what kind of a logical sequence is that?
how does
1a 2a 3a 4a 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a 12p
1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p 11p 12a
make more sense than
1a 2a 3a 4a 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a 12a
1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p 11p 12p
12a and 12 p in the first example clearly make the labelling
inconsistant! isnt it a little silly to interrupt a good cycle by
throwing some gears in the works? Military time is much better!
>Many situations provide a context that points to either noon or
>midnight, so many people have never stopped to think about the meaning
>of 12AM or 12PM.
well, maybe its time to rethink all of this!
yours in science,
haon
also, does anyone know when we will have another leap second, i
already know who i am going to ogle!
Scott Brown
wrote:
>s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
>
>>If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
>>think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
>>if you happen to know its context and convention. Likewise the
>>12AM/PM convention.
>
> No, it isn't unambiguous if you have to know something else in
>order to use it. I'm guessing it's the number of seconds since the
>UNIX epoch (The number is about the right size.), but it is a guess.
Which is why I wrote "if you happen...". It is indeed a Unix
timestamp. Of course, if you want it in Gregorian date and 12-hour
time format, that's *your* problem. :)
> Now then, as to "now". "now" being when you wrote your message?
>"now" being when you posted your message? "now" being when I
>downloaded your message? "now" being when I read your message? Or
>did you mean something else?
It was current when I ran "now", which is a four-line hack I wrote
specifically to find out the current time (I was using this in
conjunction with another program which extracted a file's timestamp,
and these were used by a shell script to see if a file is old enough
to delete).
I didn't say it was the *correct* time.
Dave Cantor
> NO! It doesn't make sense EITHER way. "Ante" means "before".
> "Post" means "after". If 12 noon is the meridiem, then it
> is not AM (before the meridiem) and it is not PM (after the
> meridiem). It IS the meridiem. Similarly for midnight.
> You are saying that it is perfectly logical to say that
> x = 12, therefore, x > x. WRONG!
Yes. In high school (lo those many years ago), I learned that 'M'
stood for the Latin 'meridiem' (literally, half a day), and that
12 M should be used for noon, but that is really redundant, as
M alone means noon. Midnight, on the other hand, is twelve
hours after noon, and is designated as 12 P.M.
Even more confusing is that airlines (and other organizations)
have sometimes used '12 M' for midnight and '12 N' for noon.
> If you want to be correct, say 12:00:01 PM, which is definitely
> PM. It is ILLOGICAL to refer to 12:00 noon as 12:00 PM. It is
> similarly illogical to refer to 12:00 midnight as 12:00 AM.
> This is why in military time, there is no such time as
> 0000. If they are planning to do an attack at midnight,
> they will say that the attack will start at 0001Z or
> whatever timezone they are using. This avoids the problem
> with "which day is this midnight in".
When I was in the US Army, we used times from 0001 through 2400,
never 0000. (And we sometimes suffixed the correct local military
time zone letter if we didn't mean Z. In Texas, it was S; in South
Carolina in was R.)
Insurance policies still to this day usually begin and end at 12:01 a.m.
local time. This avoids any possibility of misunderstanding.
> Mind you though, there is a convention which goes that
> 12 noon is 12PM and 12 midnight is 12AM. I don't use
> it myself, because I explicity state midnight or noon.
> But I can understand other people using it. But it's
> still WRONG!
Well, I agree with you, but as people use these "wrong" things
enough, they will become "right", and the older definitions that
you and I like will become obsolete, archaic, and _wrong_.
I have a friend who consistently says things like "Tuesday midnight"
to mean the midnight that follows 11:59 p.m. MONDAY. Traditional usage is
that Tuesday midnight means the midnight that follows 11:59 p.m. TUESDAY
night.
In college, I knew a guy who insisted on not acknowledging the
new day or date until 4 a.m. So he would say things like
1:30 a.m. Monday night, and I would clarify to be sure by
responding "Do you mean 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning Monday
night?" (To which he would respond affirmatively.) It was cumbersome, but
was about the only way we could get around the ambiguity.
Even the USNO, the official government agency that renders official
time to the U.S., has caved in and now starts the day with 0000.
I think it's time we gave in. I'll still call the midnight that follows
11:59 p.m. Tuesday, though, "Tuesday midnight" and not
"Wednesday midnight". And I'll still clarify just which 12:30 a.m.
it is when someone says something like "half-past midnight Tuesday."
Dave C.
--
David A. Cantor +1 203.961.8668
Stamford, CT 06902 DCa...@shore.net
Hong Ooi
wrote:
>Chris Hedley wrote:
>>
>> In article <36948...@192.168.0.20>,
>> "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> writes:
>> > Is there anyone heer who uses the other convention (12AM=noon)?
>>
>> I've never heard of that convention. Just as an onlooker, I'm surprised
>> this thread's gone on so long... (just for the record, I've always accepted
>> that 12PM==noon and 12AM==midnight)
>
>So the logical sequence is: 10AM, 11AM, 12PM, 1PM ... 10PM, 11PM, 12AM,
>1AM. Many situations provide a context that points to either noon or
>midnight, so many people have never stopped to think about the meaning
>of 12AM or 12PM.
Yeesh people, the answer is obvious: just use 24 hour clocks. That way
everyone knows what 12AM, 13AM, 14AM, ... means, and similarly for 1PM,
2PM, 3PM ...
--
Hong Ooi | "Was 666, now only 4.95! Markdown of the Beast!!"
ho...@zip.com.au |
Sydney, Australia |
fra...@and.nl
> This is why in military time, there is no such time as
> 0000. If they are planning to do an attack at midnight,
> they will say that the attack will start at 0001Z or
> whatever timezone they are using. This avoids the problem
> with "which day is this midnight in".
How on earth could anyone misunderstand `Monday, 00:00' as being
something other than the beginning of Monday? Following your
reasoning, you can't write 11:00 either - now which hour would that be
in?
(No wonder Forrest Gump felt right at home in the army.)
--
Greetings, Frans
ll...@my-dejanews.com
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
> In article <36804dcd...@news.vip.net>,
> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@vip.net> wrote:
> > I prefer 24 hour time myself. 0001 makes more sense than 12:01
> >AM to me. Your opinion? See my sig.
>
> Well, I agree, actually.
>
> For about a year, I had a watch in 12-hour mode. I had it in 12-hour mode
> because I couldn't figure out how to change it; the watch had four buttons.
---------------------------
Questions, below.
> Set, mode (changed from hours to minutes to seconds...), adjust, and some
> other button that didn't do anything in clock set mode. No 12/24 indicated
> anywhere on the watch.
>
> Then one day, while setting the watch for timezones, I saw it flash into 24
> hour mode and back.
>
> I started poking.
>
> Turned out that, *in set mode only*, the 'light' button (which was on the
> face of the watch, so it didn't "look like a button") was a 12/24 switch.
> And didn't illuminate.
How many of these 'light' buttons don't really work? Or do they only work
when my arm is deeply thrust within the refrigerator?? Okay. It's past 12
P.M. now. All I have to do is press an easily marked -> JOG/WALK button to
put me in militiaary-time. So that, when you think about it, is simple and
intuitive. Remember, digital watches are MORE efficient than those old-time
magnetic-gear ones, that don't even work when you electromagnet them.
One problem with this fine Casio though. It won't make music at all. I know
that's irrelephant since I can't find the keyboard, and the buttons must be
so super-small I wouldn't even be able to poke out 'Yankee Doodle', but It
would have been nice to hear other notes than the 'chirpy beep'.
And it can measure my pulse! I think I have to be moving, though.
Would this watch kill me if I tried to excersize standing still?
TXN 1138 vance!
*L*.
> Ugh.
>
> -s
> --
> Copyright 1998, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
> C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
> Send me money - get cool programs and hardware! No commuting, please.
> Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!
>
The smiley below is only an adaptation. Distribulate as you see fit!!
--
*~~(:-o) "Please do not press this button again."
#zjjy;**rrr:$ava+ejleej:dtss*+edgt+et-tne<t-tlef+edlejtd?:#zj<?
(watch out!) ll...@my-dejanews.com reads very little mail & spam.
elow...@avalon.net reads mail and makes fun of spam quite a bit.
Sergej Roytman
Randal L. Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Brown <s...@xmission.removethis.com> writes:
>Scott> It was current when I ran "now", which is a four-line hack I wrote
>Scott> specifically to find out the current time (I was using this in
>Scott> conjunction with another program which extracted a file's timestamp,
>Scott> and these were used by a shell script to see if a file is old enough
>Scott> to delete).
>Four lines?? You need Perl.
>
> $ perl -e 'print time'
> 915769067
> $
% /u/vols/s4.gnu/bin/date +%s
on my machine. Note, however, that the Gnu date(1) man-page lists %s
as a non-standard extension, and that my regular SunOS date(1) fails
miserably with that option.
--
Sergej Roytman
Jim Esler
> Yeesh people, the answer is obvious: just use 24 hour clocks. That way
> everyone knows what 12AM, 13AM, 14AM, ... means, and similarly for 1PM,
> 2PM, 3PM ...
Now that is a convention I have never seen before: use of AM and PM with
a 24 hour clock. It hurts just to think about it.
--
Jim Esler
Sergej Roytman
>bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message <7716nh$of8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>>12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
>>transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
>In fact, I was under the impression that even those people on this list who
>disagreed with its use understood what most people meant by it.
>
It's the standard in Russian. It was a slight addition to my parents'
confusion, just after we immigrated to the US, that "twelve in the
morning" != "noon", and "twelve at night" != "midnight". Me? I was too
young to care.
>>BTW, I'M TRANSMITTING EXPLICIT INFORMATION RIGHT NOW,
>>IKYWMF AITYD!!!1!!
>Nope, you're not, because I don't understand what you're saying.
>
>I Kill You With My Feet
>And In Your Dojo!!!1!!
No, that's what the conversation had deteriorated to in
rec.martial-arts, last time I checked. Alas, the present state of
perpetual September has hit that newsgroup particularly hard.
--
Sergej Roytman
Gene Wirchenko
>On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 22:20:03 GMT, ge...@vip.net (Gene Wirchenko)
>wrote:
>
>>s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
>>
>>>If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
>>>think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
>>>if you happen to know its context and convention. Likewise the
>>>12AM/PM convention.
>>
>> No, it isn't unambiguous if you have to know something else in
>>order to use it. I'm guessing it's the number of seconds since the
>>UNIX epoch (The number is about the right size.), but it is a guess.
>
>Which is why I wrote "if you happen...". It is indeed a Unix
>timestamp. Of course, if you want it in Gregorian date and 12-hour
>time format, that's *your* problem. :)
It is still a guess on my part and is still ambiguous. Now, if
you had said that it was a UNIX timestamp, then it would have been
unambiguous (assuming only one meaning for UNIX timestamp).
It's not a matter of what I want. It's a matter of "What is
it?". If I know what it is, then I can convert it to what I need. If
I don't know what it is, I can't.
Suppose a time figure is given as 990107215400. Is it "now"
(when I looked at my watch) expressed as YYMMDDhhmmss? Is it a
UNIX"-ish" timestamp in thousandths of a second of not too long from
now? Is it something else?
>> Now then, as to "now". "now" being when you wrote your message?
>>"now" being when you posted your message? "now" being when I
>>downloaded your message? "now" being when I read your message? Or
>>did you mean something else?
>
>It was current when I ran "now", which is a four-line hack I wrote
>specifically to find out the current time (I was using this in
>conjunction with another program which extracted a file's timestamp,
>and these were used by a shell script to see if a file is old enough
>to delete).
>
>I didn't say it was the *correct* time.
Sincerely,
Dewayne Basnett
10AM, 11AM, 12 Noon, 1PM...10PM, 11PM, 12 Midnight, 1AM...
Noah A Christis wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 16:16:57 -0600, Jim Esler <James....@cdc.com>
> wrote:
>
> >So the logical sequence is: 10AM, 11AM, 12PM, 1PM ... 10PM, 11PM, 12AM,
> >1AM.
>
> what kind of a logical sequence is that?
> how does
>
> 1a 2a 3a 4a 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a 12p
> 1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p 11p 12a
> make more sense than
>
> 1a 2a 3a 4a 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a 12a
> 1p 2p 3p 4p 5p 6p 7p 8p 9p 10p 11p 12p
>
> 12a and 12 p in the first example clearly make the labelling
> inconsistant! isnt it a little silly to interrupt a good cycle by
> throwing some gears in the works? Military time is much better!
>
> >Many situations provide a context that points to either noon or
> >midnight, so many people have never stopped to think about the meaning
> >of 12AM or 12PM.
>
> well, maybe its time to rethink all of this!
>
> yours in science,
> haon
>
> also, does anyone know when we will have another leap second, i
> already know who i am going to ogle!
--
Dewayne Basnett - dew...@nvi.to - www.nvi.to
phone: 610.415.0170 - pager: 888.233.7395 pin 1911091
"Golf has probably kept more people sane than psychiatrists have."
Harvey Penick
Paul Guertin
Christis) wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 16:16:57 -0600, Jim Esler <James....@cdc.com>
> wrote:
>
> >So the logical sequence is: 10AM, 11AM, 12PM, 1PM ... 10PM, 11PM, 12AM,
> >1AM.
>
> what kind of a logical sequence is that?
Ever wondered why the digits on your keyboard go 1234567890
instead of 0123456789? That's because zero stands for 10, and
since the original design of the typewriter keyboard was in
base 12 (the PDP-8 had a 12-bit microprocessor), 12 hours
are equal to 0 hours, so the "logical sequence" makes sense.
There is no truth to the rumor that the zero was moved to
slow down typists in a machiavellian plot by the abacus
manufacturers.
Blah blah humans used to have 6 fingers on each hand, blah blah
J. Essig, blah blah microwaved chad tastes just like coconut.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
Paul Guertin
> Yeesh people, the answer is obvious: just use 24 hour clocks. That way
> everyone knows what 12AM, 13AM, 14AM, ... means, and similarly for 1PM,
> 2PM, 3PM ...
Does anyone know where I can buy an analog 168-hour clock? I'm sure
I've seen one before but I can't remember where.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
Peter Seebach
Randal L. Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>Four lines?? You need Perl.
>
> $ perl -e 'print time'
> 915769067
> $
Yes, but the 'naive' one in C is faster, by a few milliseconds. :)
lis...@zetnet.co.uk
On 1999-01-07 kis...@allegro.cs.tufts.edu(KirkIs) said:
:I went to the UK, and it looked as if they had commercials too.
We do. But many fewer, shorter, slightly better, and we have two channels
which are completely free of advertising and produce some of the best drama
around (though some of the worst sitcoms; you guys win there). Of course,
that means a tax on TVs to pay for them...
--
Communa (lis...@zetnet.co.uk) -- you know soft spoken changes nothing
Alex Suter
>On 1999-01-07 kis...@allegro.cs.tufts.edu(KirkIs) said:
> :I went to the UK, and it looked as if they had commercials too.
>
>We do. But many fewer, shorter, slightly better, and we have two channels
>which are completely free of advertising and produce some of the best drama
>around (though some of the worst sitcoms; you guys win there). Of course,
>that means a tax on TVs to pay for them...
And everyone lives in constant fear of the Orwellian
Television Police. Cruising through towns in the dead
of night they scan for unlicensed televisions, ready
to send in the TV Shock Troopers at a moments notice.
Is "Faulty Towers" really worth being thrown into the
infamous English Television Gulags? Is television
freedom ever really free?
Watch in peace, my brother.
--
Lupus Yonderboy
http://world.std.com/~asuter/
"GO HUMAN! NOT APE!"
Alex Suter
>Randal L. Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>Four lines?? You need Perl.
>>
>> $ perl -e 'print time'
>> 915769067
>> $
>
>Yes, but the 'naive' one in C is faster, by a few milliseconds. :)
Yeah, but then you always have to mentally add a few
milliseconds to the time every time you check it, and
sometimes you forget and end up a few milliseconds
early or late for something, and everyone knows you
were naive about time and it's very embarassing.
That's why I keep an atomic clock in my pants, so I'm
always definitively on time for my three headed sons
soccer games.
Foobar T. Clown
>
> I bought my 16C around 15 years ago. I installed the three batteries
> and saw in the instructions that they'd probably last 6 months or so.
>
> I'm still using the same three batteries.
Hmm, I get two to three years on a silver oxide set if I can find
them. I get less than two years if I have to use alkalines. I've got a
16C and an 11C (same hardware platform, and both purchased at the same
time) which sit side by side on my desk at work. The batteries in the
11C last somewhat longer, but then sometimes a whole week can go by and
I don't pick it up. I use the 16C nearly every day.
Chris Pirih, proverbs at wolfenet dot com
Mike Swaim <sw...@gemini.c-com.net> wrote:
| Joe Thompson <$spam$@orion-com.com> wrote:
| : My Casio, purchased in 1991, is turning 8 in 6 days. I finally had to get
| : the original "5-year" battery replaced about a year ago.
|
| My last casio lasted about 8 years until the battery died. I took it
| to 3 different shops, but none of them could get the back off to replace
| the battery. Since I'd had problems replacing the battery on my previous
| casio as well, I gave up and bought a self winding analog watch.
I haven't worn a watch in fifteen years.
Excuse me, do you know what time it is?
---
chris
William Hamblen
Korpela) wrote:
>Well, we don't know the context now do we. Is that the number of elapsed
>seconds since Jan 1 1970 0:00:00 GMT? Or is it the number of days since
>Jan 1 1970 0:00:00 GMT multiplied by 86400? Most UNIX systems and C compliers
>I've used claim the first, but actually use the second. The difference is
>that a day isn't always exactly 86400 seconds long. The difference can be
>quite important in some applications.
Unix ignores leap seconds; therefore, UTC now stands for Unix Time on
your Computer instead of Coordinated Universal TIme. A civil day is
still 86400 seconds, though. The length of any other day depends on
the kind of day you're talking about.
bea...@my-dejanews.com
s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 02:38:40 GMT, bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >> is by definition 'right'.
> >
> >12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
> >transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
>
If I know the convention, AND the person saying the
time knows the convention, AND they are using the
convention, AND I KNOW they are using the convention,
it's not ambiguous for ME. What about somebody else,
who doesn't know the convention? What about somebody
who doesn't use the convention for some reason? It's
ambiguous all right.
>
> >If the convention allowed for EXPLICIT TRANSMISSION
> >OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
> >would it?
>
> If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
> think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
> if you happen to know its context and convention. Likewise the
> 12AM/PM convention.
I would think you are using a unix timestamp, probably
number of seconds past 1 Jan 1970. But WHAT HAS THAT
GOT TO DO WITH AM/PM/NOON/MIDNIGHT???/?? Your logic is
faulty. People who use these timestamps KNOW they are
seconds past 1970. When somebody uses 12AM or 12PM I
DON'Y KNOW FOR SURE WHETHER THEY ARE USING THE CONVENTION!
I *DO*, however, know that they are WRONG! It is
ambiguous to say 12AM or 12PM and it is wrong.
cheers
beable van beable
--
I hate leonardo dacapprio I thin he is a little bitch and a whiner. I
would pay my life savinge to beable to kick his
ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- Mark Sharpe
Don Stokes
Sergej Roytman <ft...@engin.umich.edu> wrote:
>In article <m1emp6t...@halfdome.holdit.com>,
>Randal L. Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>Four lines?? You need Perl.
>> $ perl -e 'print time'
>
>
>on my machine. Note, however, that the Gnu date(1) man-page lists %s
>as a non-standard extension, and that my regular SunOS date(1) fails
>miserably with that option.
But then Perl is a non-standard extension. Plus you have to wait for
the OS to haul Perl's revolting bloated elephantine carcass into core
each time...
--
Don Stokes, Networking Consultant http://www.daedalus.co.nz +64 25 739 724
bea...@my-dejanews.com
"Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message <7716nh$of8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> >> >12 noon is 12PM and 12 midnight is 12AM. I don't use
> >> >it myself, because I explicity state midnight or noon.
> >> >But I can understand other people using it. But it's
> >> >still WRONG!
> >>
> information
> >> is by definition 'right'.
> >
> >Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
> >12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
> >transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
> >
>
> In fact, I was under the impression that even those people on this list who
> disagreed with its use understood what most people meant by it.
>
> Is there anyone heer who uses the other convention (12AM=noon)?
>
> >OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
> >would it?
>
> was 'wrong'. I fail to see how it can be wrong if it's understood.
Just because *I* understand it, doesn't mean that EVERYBODY
understands it. It is wrong because:
12 is not before 12
12 is not after 12.
This is very simple.
>
> >BTW, I'M TRANSMITTING EXPLICIT INFORMATION RIGHT NOW,
> >IKYWMF AITYD!!!1!!
>
> Nope, you're not, because I don't understand what you're saying.
>
> I Kill You With My Feet
> And In Your Dojo!!!1!!
SEE! YOU UNDERSTAND!!
cheers
beable van beable
--
Wait... It's not PECAN? You mean that I drove all the way to the
grocery store, spent 20 minutes looking for pecans, finally left with a
can of mixed nuts, and spent 2 hours picking out all the pecans...
...FOR NOTHING?? *&^%$#@! -- Ronald J Kimball
bea...@my-dejanews.com
ge...@vip.net wrote:
> s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 02:38:40 GMT, bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >
> >> "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Any form of communication that allows explicit transmission of information
> >>> is by definition 'right'.
> >>
> >>Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
> >>12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
> >>transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
>
> then you have a problem, but it isn't ambiguity. If I refer to a
What if SOMEBODY ELSE doesn't know? They can't WORK IT OUT,
because IT'S ILLOGICAL AND WRONG!
> medical condition as "epitaxis" (I think that's the spelling.), you
> may not know what I am talking about. That doesn't make it ambiguous.
> A doctor would probably know the term. (BTW, it means nosebleed.)
So you say that epitaxis is not ambiguous, therefore
12AM and 12PM are not ambiguous. This is a VERY STUPID
argument.
>
> >If you know the convention, it's not ambiguous.
>
> Right!
If EVERYBODY knows the convention, AND everybody
USES the convention ALL THE TIME, AND everybody
KNOWS that everybody is using the convention all
the time, THEN it's not ambiguous. Currently, it
is ambiguous.
> >>If the convention allowed for EXPLICIT TRANSMISSION
> >>OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
> >>would it?
>
> It does. You can send "12AM" and "12PM".
But what if somebody receives the message who
DOES NOT KNOW THE CONVENTION? It is AMBIGUOUS
and WRONG. 12 noon and 12 midnight can't be
confused.
>
> >If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
> >think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
> >if you happen to know its context and convention. Likewise the
> >12AM/PM convention.
>
> No, it isn't unambiguous if you have to know something else in
> order to use it. I'm guessing it's the number of seconds since the
> UNIX epoch (The number is about the right size.), but it is a guess.
Thank you for supporting my argument. 12AM and 12PM are AMBIGUOUS
because you HAVE TO KNOW SOMETHING ELSE IN ORDER TO USE IT,
viz: the convention.
cheers
beable van beable
beable industries
--
I hate leonardo dacapprio I thin he is a little bitch and a whiner. I
would pay my life savinge to beable to kick his
ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- Mark Sharpe
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
barnacle
Of course, the *nicest* thing about an HP calculator is that like the old
Sinclair Scientific, no-oe *ever* borrows it more than once :)
barnacle
nailed-barnacle.home.ml.org
bea...@my-dejanews.com
fra...@and.nl wrote:
> bea...@my-dejanews.com writes:
> > This is why in military time, there is no such time as
> > 0000. If they are planning to do an attack at midnight,
> > they will say that the attack will start at 0001Z or
> > whatever timezone they are using. This avoids the problem
> > with "which day is this midnight in".
>
> How on earth could anyone misunderstand `Monday, 00:00' as being
> something other than the beginning of Monday? Following your
They could think it was the midnight at the end of the
monday.
> reasoning, you can't write 11:00 either - now which hour would that be
> in?
They wouldn't say Monday, they would use a date. So
if they said 19990909 0000Z, some idiot would wonder
whether that was one minute before 19990909 0001Z or
one minute before 19990910 0001Z. Which day is a midnight
in anyway? I would say that midnight is not IN either
day. It is the divider BETWEEN the two days. Remember,
military types are pretty stupid. It pays to minimise
the possibility of mistakes.
>
> (No wonder Forrest Gump felt right at home in the army.)
That's right! They are all styupid in the army!
ABOLISH MIDNIGHT! ABOLISH 12AM! ABOLISH 12PM!
THEY ARE ALL AMBIGUOUS!
cheers
beable van beable
--
Turn in your com badge and phasor.
Under United Nations regulation # 1989-YHBT.YHL.FOAD, I must
hereby relieve you from duty on grounds of excessive cluelessness
in a U.N. condemned newsfroup. -- F. Frogalogus
bea...@my-dejanews.com
Jim Esler <James....@cdc.com> wrote:
> Hong Ooi wrote:
> > Yeesh people, the answer is obvious: just use 24 hour clocks. That way
> > everyone knows what 12AM, 13AM, 14AM, ... means, and similarly for 1PM,
> > 2PM, 3PM ...
>
> a 24 hour clock. It hurts just to think about it.
I guess this is REALLY gonna hurt then:
15 hundred o'clock hours PM in the afternoon.
cheers
beable van beable
--
The guy's a troll. Ignore him. -- Captain Jean-Luc Picard
The guy's not even the real Jean-Luc Picard. Ignore him. -- Etienne Rouette
bea...@my-dejanews.com
ll...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> How many of these 'light' buttons don't really work? Or do they only work
> when my arm is deeply thrust within the refrigerator?? Okay. It's past
12
> P.M. now. All I have to do is press an easily marked -> JOG/WALK button to
> put me in militiaary-time. So that, when you think about it, is simple and
And when you push the JOG/WALK button a loud military voice
screams out:
DOCTOOOOORRRRR AAAAAARRROOONN, QUUUUIIIIIICCCCCKKKK MARCH!
DOCTOOOOORRRRR AAAAAARRROOONN, DOOOOUUUUBBBBBLLLLLEE TIME!
and then you have to walk and jog just like it tells you to.
cheers
beable
--
POWERS MAY NOT MATCH POWERS PICTURED ON BOX. PLEASE USE POWERS ONLY
FOR GOOD, NEVER EVIL. WHEN NOT TO USE POWERS, SHALL KEEP IN POLYBAG.
-- joe bay
Peter Seebach
>But what if somebody receives the message who
>DOES NOT KNOW THE CONVENTION? It is AMBIGUOUS
>and WRONG. 12 noon and 12 midnight can't be
>confused.
They could if you knew it was a full moon, but it was really really stormy
out, and you weren't very close to the window, and you'd just been sleeping
for what felt like a *REALLY* long time.
>Thank you for supporting my argument. 12AM and 12PM are AMBIGUOUS
>because you HAVE TO KNOW SOMETHING ELSE IN ORDER TO USE IT,
>viz: the convention.
Hmm. Actually, I always thought they were "obvious", because it's "obvious"
that 12:01 and 12:00 must be in the same set. That said, it's a guess, not
a particularly compelling proof.
Scott Brown
>In article <36945599...@news.xmission.com>,
> s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
>> On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 02:38:40 GMT, bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>>
>> >Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
>> >12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
>> >transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
>>
>> If you know the convention, it's not ambiguous.
>
>If I know the convention, AND the person saying the
>time knows the convention, AND they are using the
>convention, AND I KNOW they are using the convention,
Common conventions govern the way we humans communicate with each
other. It's obvious to me that most of the civilized world knows and
understands that 12AM=night and 12PM=day.
>it's not ambiguous for ME. What about somebody else,
>who doesn't know the convention? What about somebody
>who doesn't use the convention for some reason?
That's just too damn bad. The rest of us don't have a problem with
it.
Gene Wirchenko
>In article <36951034...@news.vip.net>,
> ge...@vip.net wrote:
>> s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
>>
>> >On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 02:38:40 GMT, bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>> >
>> >>In article <36933...@192.168.0.20>,
>> >> "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Any form of communication that allows explicit transmission of information
>> >>> is by definition 'right'.
>> >>
>> >>Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
>> >>12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
>> >>transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
>>
>> How is it ambiguous? If you don't know what 12AM and 12PM are,
>> then you have a problem, but it isn't ambiguity. If I refer to a
>
>What if SOMEBODY ELSE doesn't know? They can't WORK IT OUT,
>because IT'S ILLOGICAL AND WRONG!
Library, reference book. Need I say more?
>> medical condition as "epitaxis" (I think that's the spelling.), you
>> may not know what I am talking about. That doesn't make it ambiguous.
>> A doctor would probably know the term. (BTW, it means nosebleed.)
>
>So you say that epitaxis is not ambiguous, therefore
>12AM and 12PM are not ambiguous. This is a VERY STUPID
>argument.
But I didn't say that. I drew a parallel. Twisting another's
words is very impolite.
>> >If you know the convention, it's not ambiguous.
>>
>> Right!
>
>If EVERYBODY knows the convention, AND everybody
>USES the convention ALL THE TIME, AND everybody
>KNOWS that everybody is using the convention all
>the time, THEN it's not ambiguous. Currently, it
>is ambiguous.
That would mean that everything is ambiguous. After all, I may
be communicating in English and you may merely be using something else
similar in appearance.
>> >>If the convention allowed for EXPLICIT TRANSMISSION
>> >>OF INFORMATION, then this discussion would not exist,
>> >>would it?
>>
>> It does. You can send "12AM" and "12PM".
>
>But what if somebody receives the message who
>DOES NOT KNOW THE CONVENTION? It is AMBIGUOUS
No, it is not ambiguous; it is not understood.
>and WRONG. 12 noon and 12 midnight can't be
>confused.
I wouldn't want to bet on that. Isn't this whole thread about
confusion of those two times? I wonder what "12 midnight" means at
the North Pole in summer.
>> >If I said that the time is now exactly 915690748, what would you
>> >think? It's a totally non-ambiguous expression of the time and date,
>> >if you happen to know its context and convention. Likewise the
>> >12AM/PM convention.
>>
>> No, it isn't unambiguous if you have to know something else in
>> order to use it. I'm guessing it's the number of seconds since the
>> UNIX epoch (The number is about the right size.), but it is a guess.
>
>Thank you for supporting my argument. 12AM and 12PM are AMBIGUOUS
>because you HAVE TO KNOW SOMETHING ELSE IN ORDER TO USE IT,
>viz: the convention.
I'm not, but enjoy your fantasies.
Of course, you have to know something else. You also have to
know something else to understand the difference between noon and
midnight, too.
I'm not really supporting your argument. You see, you don't
really understand me because I use words a little differently than you
do and thus my argument is ambiguous. If you read it right, I'm
actually arguing for you to be castrated then hanged.
Dr. Peter Kittel
>bea...@my-dejanews.com writes:
>> This is why in military time, there is no such time as
>> 0000. If they are planning to do an attack at midnight,
>> they will say that the attack will start at 0001Z or
>> whatever timezone they are using. This avoids the problem
>> with "which day is this midnight in".
>
>How on earth could anyone misunderstand `Monday, 00:00' as being
>something other than the beginning of Monday? Following your
>in?
Indeed. Here in Germany, we're using (in civil life) 00:00 as a
quite normal time, but there is no 24:00 far and wide. So every day
reaches from 00:00 to 23:59. Where should there be any problem?
Sometimes they are really funny those Americans...
Look, we also talk of 3 o'clock for 15:00 in personal conversation,
when no ambiguity is around (we just don't have anything similar to
the short AM and PM in German language, our "vormittags" and "nach-
mittags" are too long for such use), but even there in private talk we
change to 24 hour figures when there's the danger of misunderstanding.
Quite convenient, this way. Recommended.
--
Best Regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail:
Private Site in Frankfurt, Germany \X/ peterk @ combo.ganesha.com
bea...@my-dejanews.com
s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
> On Sat, 09 Jan 1999 04:33:55 GMT, bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >In article <36945599...@news.xmission.com>,
> > s...@xmission.removethis.com (Scott Brown) wrote:
> >> On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 02:38:40 GMT, bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >>
> >> >Thank you for supporting my argument. The 12AM == midnight,
> >> >12PM == noon convention allows for SOMEWHAT AMBIGUOUS
> >> >transmission of information, and is therefore WRONG!
> >>
> >
> >time knows the convention, AND they are using the
> >convention, AND I KNOW they are using the convention,
>
> Common conventions govern the way we humans communicate with each
> other. It's obvious to me that most of the civilized world knows and
> understands that 12AM=night and 12PM=day.
So Russia is not civilised? Did you read the post by the
guy from Russia who says that 12AM is noon in Russia?
>
> >it's not ambiguous for ME. What about somebody else,
> >who doesn't know the convention? What about somebody
> >who doesn't use the convention for some reason?
>
> That's just too damn bad. The rest of us don't have a problem with
> it.
And that's how wars get started! The President of the USA goes to
Russia and the President of Russia says "We will meet at 12AM, da?"
and the USA president turns up at midnight and there's nobody there
and HE PRESSES THE BUTTON!!!1!
Just to sum up this whole thing, I would like to propose a
NEW naming scheme for noon and midnight. I have searched
all dictionaries in the world to find some acronyms that
don't mean anything. I EVEN LOOKED IN THE COMPUTER JARGON
DICTIONARY AND THESE WEREN'T IN THERE! So I propose that
12 noon be henceforth known as 12YHBT and 12 midnight be
known as 12YHL. Because YHBT and YHL are acronyms that
are NOT USED ANYWHERE ELSE, NOT EVEN IN THE COMPUTER
JARGON DICTIONARY, we can use these acronyms in COMPLETE
SAFETY! THERE CAN BE NO MISUNDERSTANDINGS!
I am posting this just before 12 YHBT! See? It's really
easy!
cheers
Beable van Beable
Beable Industries
YHBT YHL Division
--
"I'm not disembowelling you, I'm kissing you with my entrenching tool."
-- Tom Scudder
Eric J. Korpela
William Hamblen <william...@nashville.com> wrote:
>On 7 Jan 1999 17:23:04 GMT, kor...@islay.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J.
>Korpela) wrote:
>
>>Well, we don't know the context now do we. Is that the number of elapsed
>>seconds since Jan 1 1970 0:00:00 GMT? Or is it the number of days since
>>Jan 1 1970 0:00:00 GMT multiplied by 86400? Most UNIX systems and C compliers
>>I've used claim the first, but actually use the second. The difference is
>>that a day isn't always exactly 86400 seconds long. The difference can be
>>quite important in some applications.
>
>Unix ignores leap seconds; therefore, UTC now stands for Unix Time on
>your Computer instead of Coordinated Universal TIme.
In other words, there are two possibilities. Either the sysadmin sets the
the system time to coordinated universal time and therefore the seconds
since epoch are wrong. This is the most likely possibility. The other
is that he/she set the seconds since epoch correctly, therefore the time
of day is incorrect. Any way you look at it, specifying a unix time for
anything is very ambiguous.
Eric
--
Eric Korpela | An object at rest can never be
kor...@ssl.berkeley.edu | stopped.
<a href="http://sag-www.ssl.berkeley.edu/~korpela">Click for home page.</a>
John Varela
> Does anyone know where I can buy an analog 168-hour clock? I'm sure
> I've seen one before but I can't remember where.
I have a 744-hour analog watch. Being mechanical it doesn't know about other
than 31-day months, so requires resetting five times a year.
--
John Varela
(delete . between mind and spring to e-mail me)
John Varela
> You already agreed that you understood the convention. but you then said it
> was 'wrong'. I fail to see how it can be wrong if it's understood.
I understand the convention that the new millennium starts on 1/1/00, but, but,
but ... oh, forget it.
Ron Hunsinger
(Alex Suter) wrote:
> That's why I keep an atomic clock in my pants, so I'm
> always definitively on time for my three headed sons
> soccer games.
Why not just ask him the time, and average the three answers?
-Ron Hunsinger
Ron Hunsinger
> I'm not really supporting your argument. You see, you don't
> really understand me because I use words a little differently than you
> do and thus my argument is ambiguous. If you read it right, I'm
> actually arguing for you to be castrated then hanged.
That's a great suggestion! I'll bring the camel, you bring the olives.
-Ron Hunsinger
Peter Kerr
>>
>>No it isn't. That's one of the reasons the Sony sucks. Having to switch
>>the TV on to program the VCR sucks. Hard.
>
>You are obviously part of the 3% of the american public that ever turns
>their TV off.
NitPick: If it's turned off via the remote, it's not turned "off"...
--
Peter Kerr bodger
School of Music chandler
University of Auckland New Zealand neo-Luddite
Karl A. Krueger
: >>>On-screen programming is okay,
: >>No it isn't. That's one of the reasons the Sony sucks. Having to switch
: >>the TV on to program the VCR sucks. Hard.
: >You are obviously part of the 3% of the american public that ever turns
: >their TV off.
: NitPick: If it's turned off via the remote, it's not turned "off"...
YM "on".
--
Karl A. Krueger -- ka...@simons-rock.edu
J. Benz
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> Peter Kerr (p.k...@auckland.ac.nz) wrote:
> : >>>On-screen programming is okay,
> : >>No it isn't. That's one of the reasons the Sony sucks. Having to switch
> : >>the TV on to program the VCR sucks. Hard.
> : >You are obviously part of the 3% of the american public that ever turns
> : >their TV off.
> : NitPick: If it's turned off via the remote, it's not turned "off"...
> ^^^
> YM "on".
No, I think he means 'off'. When you turn 'off' the TV with the remote,
*something* has to be active to respond to the remote when you want to turn it
back 'on'.
Also, I remember having a thread war some time back about this - many modern
color TV's have a 'keep warm' circuit, that keeps the vitals of the picture
tube warmed up while the set is 'off'. Don't know if this is still the way
TV's are, but back when color TV first showed up in the dim past, it took a
*long* time to warm up when you turned on the set. I think it was Quasar that
first marketed 'instant on' color TV's, which included a heater circuit that
bypassed the main power switch, so it was burning a watt or two all the time
the unit was plugged into the wall. The ultimate consumer culture appliance -
burning non-renewable resources 24 hours a day to avoid missing 30 seconds of
Star Trek.
Samael
bea...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message <776peh$j0e$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>Just because *I* understand it, doesn't mean that EVERYBODY
>understands it. It is wrong because:
>12 is not before 12
>12 is not after 12.
>This is very simple.
But 12 is greater than 12 for sufficiently large values of 12.
Samael
Joe Morris
col...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu writes:
>While we're on the tangent of HP Calculator batteries, does anybody know
>a source for battery packs for the HP 35, 21 or 29c? My parents' HP35
>will be 25 this year, and it would be neat to bring it back to life.
There's a site called "The Museum of HP Calculators" that I saw a while ago
but I can't find the URL anywhere in my notes. One of the pages on this
site tells you how to rebuild the battery packs.
Perhaps someone else here in a.f.c could post the URL for this site, or
report that it no longer exists.
Joe Morris
D. Peschel
Joe Morris <jcmo...@mwunix.mitre.org> wrote:
>There's a site called "The Museum of HP Calculators" that I saw a while ago
>but I can't find the URL anywhere in my notes. One of the pages on this
>site tells you how to rebuild the battery packs.
>
>Perhaps someone else here in a.f.c could post the URL for this site, or
>report that it no longer exists.
It's alive and well at
It moved there from www.teleport.com so if you had found your URL it might
have been out-of-date anyway.
-- Derek
Dale DePriest
> [Mailed and posted]
>
> col...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu writes:
>
> >While we're on the tangent of HP Calculator batteries, does anybody know
> >a source for battery packs for the HP 35, 21 or 29c? My parents' HP35
> >will be 25 this year, and it would be neat to bring it back to life.
>
> There's a site called "The Museum of HP Calculators" that I saw a while ago
> but I can't find the URL anywhere in my notes. One of the pages on this
> site tells you how to rebuild the battery packs.
>
The 21 is easy. I simply cut the plastic case that holds the batteries
carefully and replaced the batteries with current ni-cads. Worked fine.
dale
Kirk Is
: Karl A. Krueger wrote:
[someone else wrote]
: > : >You are obviously part of the 3% of the american public that ever turns
: > : >their TV off.
: > : NitPick: If it's turned off via the remote, it's not turned "off"...
: > ^^^
: > YM "on".
: No, I think he means 'off'. When you turn 'off' the TV with the remote,
: *something* has to be active to respond to the remote when you want to turn it
: back 'on'.
Unless of course you're at my house, where the tv plugs into the cable box
and the cable remote yanks the plug on the tv. For some reason this seems
like a mean thing to do to a TV.
: Also, I remember having a thread war some time back about this - many modern
: color TV's have a 'keep warm' circuit, that keeps the vitals of the picture
: tube warmed up while the set is 'off'. Don't know if this is still the way
: TV's are, but back when color TV first showed up in the dim past, it took a
: *long* time to warm up when you turned on the set. I think it was Quasar that
: first marketed 'instant on' color TV's, which included a heater circuit that
: bypassed the main power switch, so it was burning a watt or two all the time
: the unit was plugged into the wall. The ultimate consumer culture appliance -
: burning non-renewable resources 24 hours a day to avoid missing 30 seconds of
: Star Trek.
Interestingly, the warmup time for the "plug yanked" tv is still very
short.
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
"The only intuitive user interface is a nipple"
Kirk Is
: In article <Dtql2.72$bC5....@srvr1.engin.umich.edu>,
: Sergej Roytman <ft...@engin.umich.edu> wrote:
: >In article <m1emp6t...@halfdome.holdit.com>,
: >Randal L. Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
: >>Four lines?? You need Perl.
: >> $ perl -e 'print time'
: >
: > % /u/vols/s4.gnu/bin/date +%s
: >
: >on my machine. Note, however, that the Gnu date(1) man-page lists %s
: >as a non-standard extension, and that my regular SunOS date(1) fails
: >miserably with that option.
: But then Perl is a non-standard extension. Plus you have to wait for
: the OS to haul Perl's revolting bloated elephantine carcass into core
: each time...
Isn't "compiled perl" supposed to be just around the corner? As in, they
have it as a seperate module, and pretty soon it'll be released as part of
the regular distribution?
Seems easy enough to do, given what I've heard about a Perl scripts usual
life sequence.
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
There are women who say: "For you I am ruining myself!" Others say:
"You will despise me." These are only different ways of expressing the
fatality of love. But she, she did not speak one word. -Barbey d'Aurevilly
Don Stokes
>d...@news.daedalus.co.nz (Don Stokes) writes:
>>But then Perl is a non-standard extension. Plus you have to wait for
>>the OS to haul Perl's revolting bloated elephantine carcass into core
>
>I didn't even know there *was* a version of Perl for the Decsystem-10.
<shrug> The last core machine I used was a pdp11/70. And I don't think
Perl would fit in the 32 kw virtual address space of the beast even if
it was running something vaguely unix-ish, which it wasn't.
But terminology sticks around. We still "spool" output, but to local
disk, not spools of tape. (Yes I know what "S.P.O.O.L." stands for, but
I'm also pretty sure that's a back-formed acronym, ie folks were
spooling output to tape for offline printing etc before someone decided
there oughta be an acronym for that mode of operation.)
So I'm happy with "core" as a synonym for "memory", regardless of
whether it's actually got ferrite in the beast or not. It's two less
syllables for a start...
>[funny punch card story]
There are times I'm kinda glad I missed most of the punch card era. (I was
playing with bitty boxes as people decided that bits of dead trees, or
the absence of bits of dead trees, were not such a great way to store
data after all. I think I loaded a deck once.)
--
Don Stokes, Networking Consultant http://www.daedalus.co.nz +64 25 739 724
Karl A. Krueger
(Kirk Is) wrote:
> J. Benz (be...@danet.com) wrote:
> : Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> [someone else wrote]
> : > : >You are obviously part of the 3% of the american public that ever turns
> : > : >their TV off.
> : > : NitPick: If it's turned off via the remote, it's not turned "off"...
> : No, I think he means 'off'. When you turn 'off' the TV with the remote,
> : *something* has to be active to respond to the remote when you want to
turn it
> : back 'on'.
> Unless of course you're at my house, where the tv plugs into the cable box
> and the cable remote yanks the plug on the tv. For some reason this seems
> like a mean thing to do to a TV.
Yes, but that's my point exactly. The system does not have to be always
on in order to respond to an "Turn yourself off!" signal, but it *does*
have to be always on in order to respond to a "Turn yourself on!" signal.
It's perfectly possible to build a device that has to be turned on
physically, but can be turned off (completely off) by remote. Indeed,
this would be very logical in the case of some machinery, though perhaps
not televisions.
In fact, you could even make a device that turns itself *permanently* off
by remote. This is known as a remotely-triggered self-destruct
mechanism.
The fact that televisions do not normally have these is testimony only to
the hidebound state of television engineering.
Unless television catches up with Windows NT in remote-self-destruction
technology, it will have little chance of continuing to capture
increasingly greater audience mindshare.
--
Karl A. Krueger
#include <disclaimer.h>
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>No, I think he means 'off'. When you turn 'off' the TV with the remote,
>*something* has to be active to respond to the remote when you want to turn it
>back 'on'.
I agree.
>Also, I remember having a thread war some time back about this - many modern
>color TV's have a 'keep warm' circuit, that keeps the vitals of the picture
>tube warmed up while the set is 'off'. Don't know if this is still the way
>TV's are, but back when color TV first showed up in the dim past, it took a
>*long* time to warm up when you turned on the set. I think it was Quasar that
>first marketed 'instant on' color TV's, which included a heater circuit that
>bypassed the main power switch, so it was burning a watt or two all the time
>the unit was plugged into the wall. The ultimate consumer culture appliance -
>burning non-renewable resources 24 hours a day to avoid missing 30 seconds of
>Star Trek.
No, I ran across a description of something even "better" in that
regard. It's a machine that converts butter back to cream.